I hate the media

They sensationalise every f**king thing. God forbid they wrote an article praising emergency services or the military. There is a story on www.news.com.au this morning about a South American man who “allegedly” stole a packet of biscuits, got tasered three times by police – and then died. You can read the story here.

But as always, I ask my standard question: What was this guy doing, that saw police need to taser him? The answer in this case is that he resisted arrest, then ran from police. They tasered him, but he recovered and was able to fight off up to five policemen before running away again. So, he was tasered again.

I see this as completely legitimate reasons for tasering. Police are empowered with catching criminals and seeing that charges are laid. And that’s exactly what they’ve tried to do in this case. If we were in any number of other countries, the guy would have been shot. But because of all our civil libertarians, the cops have to use tasers. And when they do – they get interogated by beaurocrats.

There’s a line in the article that asks why the man wasn’t just crash-tackled or over-powered. If Mark Morri (the author) read his own work, he’d see that the cops TRIED that. But despite being tasered already, the crim was able to fight these guys off.

And there was a story on the same website a few days ago where police tasered another guy – who subsequently died. There was a call from civil liberties groups to put a suspension on tasering. But you know what? It’s because of these groups that we have tasers in the first place! THEY are the ones that wanted a “less than lethal” alternative. But it seems that if someone with a bad heart dies from a taser – that’s the police’s fault.

It’s all well and good for the public, or these groups, or politicians to sit back after the fact and analyse every second of the incident and seek explanations as to why police followed the course of action that they did. But when you’re THERE, and shit is going down – you don’t have that luxury.

If a guy is able to fight off FIVE cops, he deserves every f**king thing he gets. If a crim continues to resist, the cops need to put them down. I don’t mean that in the euthanasia way, but in the sense that they need to bring the struggling to an end. Thanks to the civil liberties groups, they can’t just draw their weapon and shoot – they have to use a taser. And if the crim is uneffected by the taser, then the cop needs to decide AGAIN – do we taser or shoot?

In my opinion, regardless of who you are, where you’re from or what your background is: if a cop draws a gun or taser and tells you to stop – YOU STOP. And if you don’t – then face the consequences of your actions, champ. I have no problem with cops tasering anyone until they comply. If death comes as a result of bad choices by the criminal, then so be it.

Really, that means one less person we taxpayers have to pay to keep in jail. I am behind the police 100% on this. I think these guys (and gals!) do an amazing job in a world that is going mad. We want the police to do a better job, but the government cuts their funding, gives them bullshit payrises, continues to impose tougher and tougher restrictions, and then complains when things go wrong.

It’s the same in the military – our budgets get cut, our training gets cut, our powers get taken away. But the government expects us to do a better job than before – and then hangs us out to dry when things go bad.

I think the media should be singing the praises of these guys and girls. It wouldn’t have been hard to write that article, stating that police had to defend themselves to bring the guy down, or to state that they were being overpowered and potentially had their lives in danger. But no, it has to be negative about the police, doesn’t it.

Arseholes.

Police

Usually, I like cops. Almost from the day I was born, my mother worked for the state police department, so I grew up around Police – until I joined the Army.

Sure, there’s bad apples out there. There are in every job, aren’t there? But in general, I think cops are trying to do the right thing with what they’ve got.

There are two things that shit me about our Police force. One is the restrictions they have to operate under and the other is when civilians get away with treating our cops like shit.

The restrictions are ridiculous. One of my Army Reserve mates is a Police Sergeant, and the stories he tells me are amazing. Things like cops are not exempt from speed cameras when they’re working. Even if they’re responding to a call. Isn’t that stupid? How do they get to where they’re needed if they can’t rush?

What about the need for cops to carry a voice recorder – or even a video camera because of bogans? This friend of mine used to spend up to a week each month in court as a witness, from when people he had booked lodged an appeal. Generally, he won all his cases, but that was because he started recording every interaction when he pulled people over. If you ask me, he shouldn’t have to do that.

And it’s not like people were appealing getting stopped while going down a hill or anything like that. It was just about how the individual cop was rude, abusive, or gave them a ticket even though they hadn’t broken any laws. Enter the tape recording. Case closed.

But what all that meant was that every time he was in court – and every case is a whole day (because the cases run quickly, so there’s no timetable) – he’s not out there being a cop. So on average, he was spending almost two days each week in court. If you do the crime, do the time. If you speed and get a ticket, just pay the f**king thing and stop tying up our Police in frivilous cases.

I also get a little sick of cops having to defend their actions every other day. Two big cases always stick in my mind. The first one is Macquarie Fields. If you don’t know about it, it happened a few years back now. Basically, two no-hoper teenagers (on the dole, smoking drugs, etc, etc) stole a car.

They were seen by Police and a chase ensued. The young driver who had little experience behind the wheel, was driving too fast, and from memory was effected by alcohol or drugs. Anyway, the driver took a corner too fast, lost control and hit a tree, killing himself and I think his mate.

The problem here is that the locals (bogans) blamed the cops. They say the Police should have stopped the chase because they were exceeding the speed limit. They demanded an inquest into the whole thing, wasting tax payers money, only to discover that it was driver error. Why should the cops, who were doing the right thing and trying to apprehend criminals, have to defend their actions?

The second case was a seige in country Victoria. A man had taken his family hostage and was threatening to kill them. Police turned up and courdened off the street, trying to get the man to give up. A few hours in, one cop was sitting in his car, which was parked on the lawn of the house next door to the seige.

The guy comes out of his house, waving a knife around and threatening to kill his family and the cops. And then he made a mistake. He stepped off his porch and onto the front lawn.

Our mate in the Police car slipped it into Drive and aimed his car at the guy. He clipped the guy’s leg and knocked him on his arse. The other cops ran in, removed the knife and arrested the perp – saving the family without killing anyone. I think the guy had a sprained or broken leg, but IMHO, so what.

Civil Liberty groups were calling for the cop to be charged for using his car as a weapon. They were even calling for Attempted Murder. I say – give the cop a f**king medal. Sure, if the guy waved a knife at me, I’d probably be inclined to bring the whole thing to an end for the cost of a single 9mm round instead of hours of police time, followed by a lengthy trial, where the guy would probably be found mentally unstable and get medical treatment at tax payers expense.

There’s lots of these stories out there, and it shits me that cops can’t just go about their job, catching the bad guys and making us all safe, because they have to spend their time defending themselves.

Kind of along these lines, is when cops are trying to do the right thing, people respond badly, and cops get a bad rap. Classic example is coming to a noisy party. Neighbours deserve to get some sleep at 2am, and not be kept awake by drunken f**kheads who have no self control. When the cops are called and they drop by, they’re often met by these drunken yobs who swear and spit at the cops.

If I was a cop, I’d lock them up – but then I’d be doing more paperwork explaining myself. Bottom line is, if you’re being a wanker and the cops tell you to stop – then f**king stop.

There was a case about two years ago, when a cop was patrolling a train station. A young bloke jumped over a safety barrier and walked across the tracks while a train was coming.

The cop followed the guy, intending to give him a lecture about safety, but the guy told him to “Fuck off”. The cop charged him and the guy appealed. The whole thing ended up in court, where the judge basically told the cop – and the entire Police force – to harden up. He claimed that the language was fairly common, and Police should have thicker skin and be able to deal with it. The guy got off the charge.

What is the world coming to, when that’s acceptable? I’m sure you don’t have to have been brought up around Police to understand that when they step in to uphold the law, you do as you’re told.

And how recently have you seen a cop doing traffic control? For me, it was today. We drove past a farmer’s market, for f**k’s sake, and there were two cops controlling access to the carpark. And I’ve lost count of how many times I drive past roadworks and they’re using marked cars to encourage drivers to slow down.

Why aren’t the companies who are effecting the traffic responsible for safety? Those cops should be out there stopping seiges or chasing drunken bogans. And they can’t do that when they have to play nurse-maid to markets.

No wonder the Police are always under-manned. No wonder that when you ring at 2am because your f**khead neighbours (are you listening, 89 Clarke St?) are yelling and screaming their heads off, that it takes two hours for them to arrive. Because all the cops who SHOULD be on patrol, are sitting at roadworks in case someone does 50kph in a 40kph zone.

I support our cops. I think they do a great job and they should be left alone to do it properly.

Revenue Raising

I was watching the news tonight, and heard the most amazing story from Brisbane City Council (BCC). Apparently, in some bullshit attempt to save kids lives, BCC have decided that all pool owners in the state have to register online to let the government know they have a pool.

And Queensland has over 300,000 pools in homes. And here’s the catch. Did the BCC do a TV and radio campaign a couple of months in advance? Hell no. Apparently, they tried to send a letter to the individual pool owners, starting in Nov 2010, and then claimed they had trouble reminding everyone about the need to register because of the floods.

But wait…there’s more. It turns out that tomorrow was the original deadline for registering pools, and there’s still between 90,000 and 100,000 people who haven’t registered. And if you miss the deadline, you face a $2,000 fine. The GOOD news is that BCC have decided to extend the deadline.

Now, here’s my problem with this. What possible f**king point could there be to registering a pool? Is it going to save a childs life? Of course f**king not. This is the kind of bullshit revenue raising that I’m talking about.

Some level of government implements some ridiculous law with an even more ludicrous fine for not complying. Let’s assume I have a pool. And then let’s assume that I bothered to register it. Does that mean that my kids are now safe around the pool, and I can sit inside playing xbox while they swim without supervision? Of course f**king not.

I’m the kind of stubborn, principle-driven bastard that would deliberately NOT register my pool, NOT pay the fine, and happily go to court over the whole thing. And why? Because the BCC could not possibly prove to any human being with an IQ higher than 50 that registering a pool will achieve two squats of f**king anything.

I bet you’re waiting for me to start talking about speed cameras, right? Well, wait no longer friends. I do need to pre-empt my speed camera rant with the fact that I agree with them. Naturally, I don’t agree with them at the bottom of hills, or in areas where it’s unreasonable to expect drivers to be slowing down.

If they’re on a flat, straight piece of road, or even on a bend, then I think they’re fine. The reason is that the best way to hurt some of the bogans that speed is to hit them in their hip pocket. I used to think that fines for speeding and other offences should be sky high, to work as a preventative measure.

But then I lived next door to a couple of cops. The problem when fines are too high is that people can’t afford to pay them. Then they get a warrant issued. Cops have more important things to do than chase down people who don’t pay their fine, so the perp gets sent a summons to appear in court.

But guess what? Something like about 70% of these people don’t show up to court. So then they have a “Fail to attend”, which now results in an arrest warrant. If the person is ever found, they get arrested, and then they find the money to pay the fine (plus charges) and then they go home.

So look at all the waste of money, police and court’s time punishing someone who can’t afford a massive fine. So, the fines should be high, but not too high. So if you speed, remember that you ARE actually breaking the law, and you should be punished.

Sure, I’ve taken chances myself, and even now I feel free to challenge ridiculous speed limits. Where I live, there were roadworks outside someone’s house for about eight months. But the problem is, nothing was being done for about five of those months. And despite that, the contractors left the 40 kph signs up 24/7.

If their barriers impeded the road, then I’d be all for it. But when the barriers are outside the lines, and there’s no work being done, I can’t see any reason to be slowing down. Are they working on the theory that there’s people out there who can’t drive inside the white lines at the usual speed limit? Maybe these are the kids from school who couldn’t stay inside the lines when they coloured in.

My rant has gone on long enough, so I’m not going to list all the bullshit fines and fees we pay that seem to do nothing more than fill the government’s coffers. But if there’s something that’s getting up YOUR nose, feel free to drop me a line.